How-To: Hack Addressable Christmas Lights into a 7×7 Display

John Graham-Cumming created this sleek 7×7 LED display by hacking up a string of addressable Christmas lights from GE. Starting from Robert Quattlebaum’s excellent tutorial, he mounted an Arduino Pro and GE Color Effects G-35 Christmas lights inside a frame and diffused the light with a cutting board. I especially like how he used servo arms to secure the backing to the frame. He coded the Arduino so that custom messages and patterns can be displayed and in the video above he shows it displaying “Thanks GE” for making these hackable Christmas lights. [via Reddit]

More:

• Hacking LED Christmas lights
• QC Co-Lab’s LED Matrix
• Christmas Tree Responds to Twitter Mentions